Director of General Department for Residence Affairs Major General Talal Maarafi said the Public Authority for Manpower has been instructed not to issue work permits to any expatriate whose passport’s validity is less than one year in order to avoid violating the law on linking the validity of the residence permits of expatriates with that of their passports which will take effect in January.

In a press statement, he affirmed that Assistant Undersecretary for Citizenship and Passports Affairs Major General Sheikh Mazen Al-Jarrah Al- Sabah is closely monitoring all units in charge of implementing the decision. He added the ministry has granted enough grace period for expatriates to check the validity of their passports and modify their positions in all governorates.

He urged them to keep on checking their passports’ validity, renew them in a timely manner and transfer their data from the old passports to the new ones.

In other news, the cost for issuing new electronic passports to citizens will be KD 5.190 million, reports Annahar daily quoting reliable sources. Disclosing a local public trading company won the tender for the new Kuwaiti passports, sources confirmed the company will start implementing the project by the beginning of 2016 in cooperation with the Passports and Immigration Department. Sources explained the project is in response to the request of the Interior Ministry to cope with international developments and GCC standards on electronically linking the data of all GCC citizens